00:00:07,700	On. Monday, August 3rd, Mandan. School board. School board meeting. Please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Uh. Approval of agenda.

00:00:42,170	Any changes to the agenda? Hearing none. What are the wishes of the board? I would move that. We approve the agenda as stated. Second. Okay. We have a motion and a second to approve agenda. Any discussion? Hearing none. Miss Rebenitsch, please call roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Next up, we have public comment.

00:01:12,500	Anybody in the audience wishing to speak to anything on the agenda? Anyone in the audience? Going once. Twice. All right. Moving on. We’ve got, uh, administrator’s report. First up, we have 20, 26, 2027 enrollment update. Uh, we got Doctor Retterath. Yes.

00:01:31,300	Just giving you kind of a frame of where we’re at right now is we’re sitting at about 291 kindergartners. Um, I think we’d love to see that. 320 Mark. We’ll see if we get there. Overall, right now, enrollment is 4377. However, typically we have secretaries just coming back to buildings.

00:01:53,730	We’ll see a lot of fluctuation probably over the next week or two. I’ll give you another update in two weeks. Just because records requests come in during the summer and we’ll be exiting kids and we’ll be getting students in. So I’ll continue to update you over the next several meetings of where those numbers stand.

00:02:08,670	It is about 200 kids short of where RSP projected us on our projections. We’ve had those conversations before. That’s not overly surprising, but it does kind of reinforce some of the trends we saw last year and some of the decisions we made financially in result of that. So just an awareness that that’s where we’re sitting for enrollment right now.

00:02:26,130	Any idea how that compares to last year at this time? It’s difficult right now. And I’ll tell you a little bit about Infinite Campus in the next one. To pull some of those numbers. I can get them for you, but they’re going to take me a little bit of time. So.

00:02:37,230	But next, uh, meeting it was that is definitely something I can show you as kind of where we’ve been about the same time the last couple of years and how we compare. Any questions? Okay. Next up, we got Infinite Campus update Doctor Retterath. Yeah. You’ll hear a lot.

00:02:55,370	You’ve heard maybe a little bit about this. You’ll hear a lot over the next couple of weeks about the entire state is flipping over from Power school to Infinite campus.

00:03:09,900	And really, the purpose behind that is we do a ton of reporting between Power School and something called Starz, which does a lot of the data for the state and different reporting elements there. And the idea is to kind of make that a more cohesive process. So there’s not so much duplicate work, like a lot of things. That’s great in theory, it takes a long time to get there, and you got to kind of walk before you run.

00:03:26,300	So we are really working to get there, but you’re going to hear a lot of that this year of eventually we’ll be able to do that, but we can’t quite do it yet. Eventually we’ll be able to do that, but we can’t quite do it yet. Really.

00:03:38,100	Our goal this year is can we take attendance? Can we grade? Can we make sure kids are eating, you know, the basics and then we’ll build out for theirs. So just we’re asking everybody for patience. We’re doing the best we can along that, along with all the other school districts, some districts have been really early in their communication on this with families.

00:03:53,730	We’ve been a little slower with the idea that we wanted to make sure the kids were in, get a little closer to school and then start sharing it out to families. We felt like unless you have some context and something to log in to and look at, it maybe wasn’t worth the communication piece.

00:04:07,100	But now that students are getting in there, we’ll start getting more parent communication out there about what that looks like, how you log in, some of the things that we’ll continue to use until we transition and may be on that. Mosaic was just part of our food service.

00:04:23,030	We’ll continue to use right now. My school books will be a part that we continue to use. However, that will probably get transitioned at some point. But to start the year, that’s something that will continue. And then we’ve traditionally used a reminder to communicate with parents. That company was sold and no longer exists.

00:04:40,170	So we transitioned to something called Parent Square. We’ve recently just sent out information to parents along that function’s very much like remind. We went with this instead of Infinite Campuses version of messaging, because one of our non-negotiables is two way communication that we want to be able to communicate to parents, but have them have

00:04:56,870	a way to message back. And the Infinite campus product did not provide that. And we felt like that was something that was important that we continue to provide and chose to go with Parent Square. So again, kind of summarizing it all is just we’re going to need a lot of patience. I guarantee.

00:05:11,530	Day one things aren’t going to be perfect. Our tech team has gone above and beyond. I can’t speak highly enough of Jeff Rarick and his techs and our administrative staff. Kerry Power, our registrar. They’ve put hours and hours and hours into this, but it’s a lot and everybody’s doing a lot.

00:05:28,000	So we’re going to have to have patience and kind of if you hear complaints or hear things, please direct people to their to their schools so we can address them and we’ll work through it together. Now as far as like training on that, did that come from the state side or our side or how is that.

00:05:43,530	A little bit of both? Infinite campus has a really robust library of like training videos and things like that. So, uh, one thing that Jeff and his team did was put together like canvas courses, depending on what your job was like, I did the administrator one, um, secretarial staff had one of

00:05:59,170	relevant videos they needed to watch and understand. And then like today, we had a two hour Q&A with Infinite Campus. So they’ve done the videos. Now, can you ask questions? Walk us through things. So it’s been a combination of our internal training and the state. Anybody have any questions.

00:06:20,400	Okay. Next up we have updated on the summer construction projects Mister Lagasse. Yeah. Being that it’s August 3rd, I’d love to be here and tell you that they’re all done and we’re ready to go. But but we’re not.

00:06:35,900	Um, so the three big projects we have right now, uh, Mary Stark and Roosevelt, we did some renovations there. Um, and then, you know, about Lewis and Clark. I’ll start at Mary Stark. Um, they’re almost finished up the bathrooms that we were renovating are done. Um, they’re just kind of doing some finished work in those areas. The gym floor is done.

00:06:52,430	Uh, the electrical will not be done. We’re replacing the main distribution panels in that building. Um, we’re not going to get them shipped to us until October 1st. Does not affect anything that we’re going to do in school. Um, they can do all the prep work for that.

00:07:09,200	And then we’ll need a few days to shut down and change that service over. We’ll use teachers convention break or Thanksgiving break. Not going to be a problem. So, Mary Stark, we’re we’re close. Um, our staff will get their rooms and be able to get prepped for school very soon. Roosevelt.

00:07:28,770	Similar projects? Uh, not nearly as close to being completed. It’s been a very, very frustrating summer at Roosevelt. Um, it started with additional asbestos abatement that we had to do, which delayed the project.

00:07:45,300	Um, when we were tearing up some carpet tiles that were to be replaced in those rooms, we found, uh, nine inches as best as tile that we didn’t know about. So that delayed a lot of the flooring that we were going to replace in Roosevelt. And it’s pushed everything back. Um, crews are in there right now. Um, they’re working on tiling the bathrooms. Uh, carpet installers will be in there this week.

00:08:03,070	Um, but it’s going to be a push to the finish. I really hope that they’re done and out of there by the end of next week. So our teachers do have time to get their classrooms prepped. But it has been very, very frustrating. There.

00:08:16,100	Um, and then Lewis and Clark, you know, about the water damage. Um, Aero has been in there. Our sheetrock is done. Our cabinets are put back in place, and our carpet installers started today. They had an entire hallway from the gym through the fifth grade, classrooms done when I was there at 130 this afternoon. So that was encouraging.

00:08:32,400	Uh, they’re moving quickly. I expect them to be done by the end of next week, and we’ll be ready to go. And Lewis and Clark. So. , Jen, I was up at by Roosevelt in the backside here last week, and I saw a backhoe in the back of the big hole. They’re dug in.

00:08:46,770	Yeah. They’re doing some some concrete work back there. They they know they need to be done before school starts. Yeah. Okay. Any questions on on any of that? Okay. Uh, next up we got North Dakota school board convention, new member seminar October 8th through the ninth. Just.

00:09:04,730	Yeah, just a quick reminder if you’d like to attend to let myself for Mister Lagasse know several of you already have, I think. I believe we have five people going already, which is great. You can attend one or both days. The new member training.

00:09:21,300	The required training is the eighth and that’s the law seminar. And then there’s also the convention on the ninth. So even if you can’t do both days, if you’d like to do one, please let us know. Is there a deadline for that or. I believe the deadline is October 1st or second.

00:09:36,300	So the so we have a little bit of time yet. I will find that deadline here. I think Mr. Lewis is looking it up I was wrong, it’s September 18th so let us know by September 18th. All right.

00:09:57,100	Next up we have a consent agenda I think on there we’ve got the approved previous board minutes from the July 20th, 2026. I’ll move to approve second. A motion and second, any discussion. Mr. Redmond, please call roll. Yes. Yes, yes. Yes yes. Yes yes. Nothing under unfinished business. Under new business. We review and consider approval of the fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget. Exciting stuff. Now, Mr. Lagasse. It’s exciting for me. I like going through this though.

00:10:35,070	So you’re an accountant? I know. Um, yeah. Included in your packet is our is a budget report. I’m gonna try and do something a little bit different this year, and hopefully we can build a template that we can build on and kind of expand over the years to kind of give not just the board more information that

00:10:52,270	you can digest a little more easily, but also our community. If they’re looking for budget information that they can find this packet and at least get a few key takeaways from from what we’re trying to do on a on a budget perspective. So I’m going to go through this page by page in a couple of notes.

00:11:07,030	And if you have questions, please stop and ask if we’re on that page. And just just fire away at me. Um, I’m going to start on page three. Our general fund revenue summary. The only notes I really have on this page are those top four line items where we talk about our taxes.

00:11:25,770	And I just want to make a note that if you look at our general fund property taxes in our board discretionary mill levy, um, you can see in our fiscal year 26 budget that we had budgeted in both line items, but we didn’t record any revenue in the actual column for the board discretionary.

00:11:44,430	That’s just an accounting issue that I have with the county. We did take the revenue in, um, they don’t separate it on their tax rolls to get us the information. It’s not a big deal. We took that money in. We took in the right amount.

00:11:59,370	Um, I think we have that worked out for next year, but it’s it’s going to be fine going forward. Uh, the tuition levy, you can see that I don’t have anything in the 27 preliminary budget for the tuition levy. I will talk about that more in depth later.

00:12:14,070	And then the miscellaneous levy in the 26 budget. You can see we had a $0 amount there, and we took in $800,000. That is back taxes. Um, we did not levy there last year. Those are from previous years of miscellaneous levies that were just getting ketchup tax payments on now. So.

00:12:34,630	I’m going to jump ahead to page four. And in the middle of the page, um, talks about our total budget for the year, total revenue projected for fiscal year 27 is $69.2 million. This is a big increase, $3.6 million over last year. Um, really, that’s driven by by two primary factors.

00:12:58,800	It’s going to be our increase in state aid and then adding our miscellaneous levy. Um, back on the books at the full amount, as we can do legislatively. I’ll start with the state aid. State aid makes up about two thirds of our total general fund revenue. Um, it is entirely dictated by our enrollment. Um, so we are guaranteed $11,663 per student.

00:13:23,700	Um, and Doctor Retterath touched on it later with our enrollment flattening out. Um, we are going to just see the increase in the per pupil payment going forward. Um, you know, ten years ago when we added 200 students per year, you know, we’d get a huge influx in state aid revenue.

00:13:40,830	We’re not going to see that anymore. We need to watch that very, very closely and stay on top of our enrollment numbers. Um, very, very tightly. Um, I know you asked Rick kind of where we were compared to last year.

00:13:54,400	I have no new students built into our our budget this year. I it’s it is flat. And I think our numbers are bearing that out from the enrollment we’ve seen. Um, we’re way down from the RSP demographer. It is a little scary, I’ll be honest with you. So. Uh, flipping the page in the middle of the page is our property taxes.

00:14:16,100	That makes up 24% of our budget next year. The proposed budget includes our maximum amounts that we can levy in the general fund. Um, legislatively, 60 mils in the general fund levy, ten mills in the board discretionary levy, and 12 mills in the miscellaneous. We cannot go above that.

00:14:34,770	Um, that is where we are capped at legislatively last year because we did not levy in the miscellaneous, we are allowed to go to the full amount of the 12 mills. Um, I know I have had questions. Can we do ten, can we do eight? We can.

00:14:52,570	However, I want to caution you that that sets our baseline for what we can go up year over year. That would set us behind every other district in the state for what we can take in in tax revenue.

00:15:05,300	It is my recommendation that we go to the full 12 and the miscellaneous levy. Um, and if you look at the chart below, you can see the dollars that those brings in, um, in the general fund levy 12.2 the board discretionary levy, $2 million. The miscellaneous levy will bring in $2.4 million next year. That is a huge jump, um, in tax revenue.

00:15:25,900	And then because we’re going to levy the increased amount in the miscellaneous, we’ll take off the tuition levy next year. The tuition levy is not subject to any caps by legislature. If we need that in the future, we can levy for tuition costs. So are there any questions on that at all? Okay.

00:15:46,470	I’m going to jump ahead and kind of do page six and seven. Uh together we’ll get into our expenditures projecting next year about $68.9 million in expenditures. That’s a $2.5 million increase over last year’s actual cost. That is almost all due to staffing costs.

00:16:11,530	We have roughly 800 employees, um, even doing 3% raises, it adds up very, very fast with how much our staffing costs go up every year. Uh, one note on the bullet points that that last bullet point, I want to make sure that you’re aware of it. And our community is aware of it. You know, you made a very difficult decision last year to close Custer Elementary.

00:16:27,430	Our enrollment numbers are kind of saying that we needed to do that. We’re not growing. That’s going to save us roughly $600,000 this year. That’s due to staff consolidation and then not having to operate that building below that bullet point.

00:16:46,170	Uh, one new expense that we’re going to have to add in the general fund this year is $300,000 line item to make up for our hot lunch deficit. We have spent our reserves in our hot lunch fund, and we are legislatively required to backfill any deficit spent in the hot lunch fund. Uh, I’m projecting $300,000 next year.

00:17:08,500	I don’t think that’s going to be enough, to be honest with you, but it’ll be it’ll be close. Salaries and benefits. Like I said, they are our biggest cost. Just over 81% of our general fund costs go to people. Um, it’s pretty common amongst districts. I know we share this number in my large class, a school business manager group.

00:17:28,300	We talk about this every year. We’re all between 80 and 82%. It’s pretty common that that’s that’s the number where almost every district is at. Below that health insurance. I am budgeting just under $5 million in health insurance costs for the district next year. This is a major concern that I have right now.

00:17:52,830	Health insurance costs are just outpacing any sort of inflation that we have seen. Um, our health fund has operated in the negative now two years in a row. Last year we were 27% over budget. We made some plan changes to not have to increase premiums. This year. We’re already 4% over budget.

00:18:13,070	I am very, very concerned that we’re going to see very high premium increases. Um, if you look at that line graph I gave in in the packet, I show a 9.6% increase on health insurance premiums next year.

00:18:34,070	I want to make a note because I know we have staff listening that that is not necessarily what I expect premiums to go up next year. Our premium calculation starts on January 1st, so I don’t have the full amount of the premiums built into our budget. I have to rate those down because we don’t have that full year. I expect our premiums to go up next year, about 15% starting January 1st.

00:18:55,830	Um, it’s been a very, very difficult year in our health insurance fund, and we need to continue watching that. I don’t think there’s any other changes we can make to our health insurance plan to lower those costs. I think we we’re going to need to just eat some of those premium costs. So. It’s a legacy then.

00:19:14,970	So how does how does that compare to other districts in the state? I’m assuming everybody’s seeing the same increases. Our our health plan is performed probably worse than a lot of other districts. We had just a really tough year. Um, for those of you that are on our health insurance committee, last year was an anomaly. Um, I’m going to get this wrong.

00:19:37,570	I think, Mr. Hahn, you’re on that committee. I think we had 50% of our costs came from our high cost claimants, which is outside of any sort of norm that you see, that’s normally about 30%. So we had just a really, really tough year. And we are we are having to catch up for those costs right now.

00:19:53,970	Um, other districts are seeing large increases, but not to the extent that we are. So. Uh, below health insurance. Our student transportation costs, uh, just under $3 million per year. We had a 3.8% increase to our Harlow’s contract this year. And on the next page, our operations and maintenance costs for the buildings.

00:20:18,570	This does not include staff costs. This is just for maintenance supplies and then overhead lights, heat, electricity. Um, we spend about $2.8 million per year on just overhead for those buildings. Any questions on the expenditures? Okay. For the carryover? Um, the board has set a goal to have a carryover of 12%.

00:20:47,570	Um, you can see on the very bottom line that I am projecting about a 13.8% carryover at the end of fiscal year 2027, that looks very good on paper. I’m going to caution the board and our community that we had a very large increase next year due to the miscellaneous fund levy coming on board.

00:21:06,700	That is not we’re not going to see that year over year big jump that’s going to flatten out. Um, we’re going to need to be very, very careful with our budget going forward. Um, we’ve been fiscally conservative. We’re going to have some tough years. We’re going to have to really watch the legislature this year to see what happens. So.

00:21:26,970	And on the final page, our mill levy worksheet. I kind of talked at length about our general fund, our board discretionary, our tuition and our miscellaneous fund. Just a couple notes. Um, below those are building fund. Um, we are allowed to levy 18 mills. Um, it’s 17.99 on here.

00:21:49,570	That’s due to the 3% cap. The building fund is capped. Levy. Um, I have proposed that we go to our maximum allowed our special assessments next year. I’m proposing that we do not levy for special assessments. We are going to have special assessments costs.

00:22:08,200	But again, because we’re bringing on the full 12 mills and the miscellaneous fund, I think that’s a trade off that we need to make. We’ll need to use some carryover in our building fund to pay for special assessments, um, at least next year, if maybe not for a few years. I just want to want you to be very aware of that.

00:22:22,930	And then our sinking and interest levy, um, we’re going to levy 32.95 mills next year. That’s for our debt service payments on Red trail, Lakewood and the high school that’s similar to our mortgage payments were required to make those. And then I’ll stand for any questions on the mill levy. Yes.

00:22:42,230	So so with that special assessment, that’s not one that’s capped or the 3% limit that’s based on. We’re actually being assessed. Correct. Special assessments. We can levy what we pay. Yep. We were to see a large special assessment coming into effect. We could still at.

00:22:57,670	Some point yes, yes, you would have that discretion to bring that on. And we still do have that discretion this year. This is the preliminary budget. We need to make a final budget determination before October 10th. So we do have time to make any changes to this. Um, if you if you wish to do that. So.

00:23:13,600	Ryan, how are we how are we going to plan on accounting for any potential sale of high school land? I don’t have it built in right now. It’s been so quiet that I just. We all know it’s out there.

00:23:34,000	I just don’t know that what we’re going to see coming back from that, um, it is on our retreat agenda for August 17th. Um, I do have an appraiser lined up to get us a value on that property. I don’t know if I’ll have it in time for the retreat, but I’ll share it with you before we have to set a final budget. So.

00:23:51,530	And then one final note on the bottom of the mill levy worksheet. Um, you can see that potential IRS tax credit. Uh, I have been working with the Alliant Group. It’s a company out of Houston, Texas.

00:24:12,370	Um, on recovering some costs for construction of the high school, uh, as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Public entities became eligible to recover costs for energy efficient construction. I didn’t know this. The Alliant Group brought this to my attention. Um, because of how our HVAC and mechanical systems were designed at the high school, we can recover between 7 and $7.5 million of construction costs. Hopefully.

00:24:36,970	Um, we have applied for those funds. I don’t know when we’re going to get a determination letter. I don’t know if we’re eligible. I’m kind of relying on this Alliant Group to see us through this whole process. I have not budgeted for it. I hope we have some guidance.

00:24:57,230	Uh, before the board retreat, before we set our final budget, because 7 to $7.5 million in one time funds, we need to plan for that. So, um, I will have some proposals for that money when I get more information to share with you. Um, but that’s something that we need to really, really think through. So.

00:25:13,730	So with that group, then they contacted us. I mean, this is what they specialize in, correct? This is what they specialize in. And I’ve worked with the Alliant Group before. They specialize in these IRS tax credits, but they primarily have worked on the private industry side.

00:25:29,570	Um, that’s been available for a number of years. So when we’ve worked with Prairie Engineering, Icon architects, design groups, engineering firms have always been eligible to get tax credit for those energy efficient projects.

00:25:47,470	This is new where we didn’t pay taxes, so how can we be eligible? But that was part of the 22, uh, Inflation Act that public entities are eligible for that tax credit to come back. So. It still boggles my mind that we can get money that way. But we haven’t seen anything yet. Right. So are they going to be fee based then or what. Yeah, they’re fee based.

00:26:07,800	I signed a contract with them that, um, they’ll get 8% of anything that we any, any tax credit that we get back. They get 8% of that fee. So, um, due to the amount, um, their normal fee structures between 12 and 15%, but due to the amount that that’s been lowered substantially for us.

00:26:33,900	Any questions for Mister Lagasse? I guess I did talk to Mr. Lagasse today. A couple of questions on this, but I do want to thank him for what he developed here. And I do like this better. Miss for what is providing this information. Hopefully the public can understand a little better too. So thank you for that. Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you.

00:26:55,800	Okay moving on. We’ve got reviewing. Oops. We had. Yeah we should because we we should have our preliminary budget approved. Okay I would move that. We approve the 2027 preliminary budget. Okay. Second we have a motion and a second to approve the preliminary budget. Any discussion? Hearing? None. Miss Redmond, please call roll. Yes, yes.

00:27:26,200	Yes yes. yes yes. Yes. All right, next up, review and consider approval of the request to hire the following certified staff. We have Ilkka Peters, school counselor at Fort Lincoln and Red trail. Mr. Meschke. Yes.

00:27:53,070	Um, as as you recall, last board meeting, uh, we received a letter of resignation from Carol Buckler, um, in which she did pay some liquidated damages to get out of her contract. Um, we I guess we advertised for the position right away. Uh, and we were lucky enough, I think, uh, the council school counseling position is a difficult position to fill. And then, especially on such short notice.

00:28:13,200	Um, so, yes, we we we restructured, uh, the duties of a full time, uh, Carol was a part time, I believe she was 80%. And now we have 100% counseling dedicated, and we’re going to split it between two schools as some of our schools continue to grow. Uh, right now, Red trail was in need.

00:28:30,770	State law requires us to have, uh, one counselor per 300 elementary students. We’re not there yet. We still probably would need another half time one. But I don’t think we’ve been there probably in the past. Well, since the law’s been put in place.

00:28:49,200	So this is probably about as close as we’re going to get. Um, so we decided between, uh, Fort Lincoln and Red trail, she will split her time 50% between the two. And really does cover those two schools. We’re short, probably about a half time counselor in our district right now to cover the 301 ratio. So, um, I guess we would suggest you hire her.

00:29:15,000	Okay. One of the wishes of the board. I’ll make a motion to hire Alec Peters as a full time counselor for Fort Lincoln and Red trail. Second.

00:29:44,970	Okay, we have a motion and a second to hire and Miss Peters, any discussion? I do have, I do have one question in terms of counseling service. Uh, as law requires one per 300 students, is there any allowance or is it allowable for outsourcing any of those? And that was that was looked at and discussed when it first came out? Because I think all schools in the state didn’t feel that they could meet that requirement.

00:30:09,500	Uh, they I believe the state was approached and said, no, they can’t. So even though we do bring outside services in different entities into our schools to provide mental health counseling, uh, it has to be a school counselor.

00:30:28,430	Uh, the good news is we’re really not dinged anywhere for it on our, uh, I guess our accreditations or anything like that, because they know there’s such a shortage. And what we also saw happening was, uh, bigger schools were pulling from smaller schools, and they had no choices, and they had zero counselors per 2 or 300 kids, whatever they had.

00:30:43,300	So, uh, what what we’ve been told to do by the state is continue to advertise the position until we find a suitable candidate to hire it. So, um, that’s really all we need to do. Uh, we were fortunate enough to get some applicants and and get a hire, so it has to be by a school counselor, though. Yes. Any other questions? Mr. eminence, please call the roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes yes.

00:31:12,470	Yes yes. All right, next up, review and consider approval of requests for leave of absence for certified staff. Whitney nods this. Right around. Yes. You’ll see in your, uh, packet the letter from the staff. I also included our policy on professional leave of absence, as well as our negotiated agreement that deals with that.

00:31:33,870	I decided to waive the deadline of March 15th so the board could see it. We get these very infrequently that I felt it was important that you, as a board would see this request and have an opportunity to weigh in.

00:31:50,430	However, as much as I sympathize with the child care issue that she’s facing, it does fall outside of what is outlined in our negotiated agreement. As far as what are things that we can approve for leave of absence.

00:32:07,000	And so with that, I do have concerns about, if we were to approve this, the precedent that that could establish just because child care is, is such an issue for so many staff that I would encourage the the board to consider denying based on the fact that it does fall outside of our negotiated agreement and what’s outlined in there.

00:32:21,900	However, it is your decision ultimately as a board when it comes to leave of absence, to approve or deny. And with that, I can answer any questions you have. As far as precedent setting.

00:32:40,770	I mean, if we were to accept this, that could be something in the letter saying non precedent moving forward, this will be looked at a case by case scenario potentially. And that would not be precedent setting in the future. I would think. We could I just I do worry about getting inundated a bit with with those case by cases of I lost my child care in November. I went on maternity leave.

00:32:58,030	I’m not sure I want to come back and have a leave of absence until I figure that out. We certainly could put something like that in there. I’m just then worried, too, about the volume that we could get, just because this is a very common issue that families have to navigate.

00:33:15,470	The one question I had was, is, is there something we were missing, or is there some extenuating circumstances, or is this just simply a fact that I can’t find daycare? So therefore I’m requesting a leave for a year? Yeah, they they have three young kids at home.

00:33:33,500	I think it’s a combination of of just wanting specific child care and then losing the child care that they had a last minute and not being able to find it. I talked with this individual today. Um, she definitely feels very torn about it and is not, um, taking this decision lightly, but did not mention anything outside of the issue of child care as the reason.

00:33:53,770	So was it discussed about maybe a potential of her maybe leaving her position altogether? If this doesn’t get approved? That’s what I told her, is that if it depending how this the outcome of this, I said, then we would have to consider either a resignation or how are you going to come back to a

00:34:10,300	work? And what does that look like for your family? Um, would be the next steps with this for her, the middle she has been in contact with the middle school. I’ve been in contact with the principal and the band department there. I think they have a plan.

00:34:23,830	There’s a long term sub who works quite closely with us regularly that would get them through this year. If Miss Nash doesn’t come back, whether due to a leave of absence or resignation, and then that would give them an opportunity next spring to appropriately advertise for the position to to find a, um, a long term fill if we needed to.

00:34:41,500	So they do have a plan for how we would do band at the middle school. If she does not come back, whether leave of absence or resignation.

00:35:04,970	Any other questions? Was it has it been discussed? Maybe not a full year, maybe like a three year or three month or six month? Did you guys discuss that at all? I understand how tough it is for child care, and I think a year is probably way too long myself, but I would like to try to work with families too. You know, for sure. We did not talk about that.

00:35:20,000	You know, that is not something we’ve traditionally done when it comes to leave of absence. Um, this individual is also unfortunately, you know, we didn’t have an avenue we looked into like FMLA, FMLA, avenues and other avenues and really kind of exhausted all those other, um, pieces.

00:35:35,770	So again, we don’t have that outlined in our agreement that we do it for less than a year. Doesn’t mean we couldn’t have some of those conversations, but we did not. Yep. I would move that. We deny the request for the leave of absence for this certified staff member. Okay, we have a motion. I’ll second.

00:36:05,570	We have a motion and a second. Do we deny the request? Any further discussion? Mr. Evans, please call the roll. Yes. Yes. Yes. yes yes yes. Yes. Okay.

00:36:34,230	And then if it’s okay with the board, it does state that will respond in writing with the, um, outcome if I will see you on it. But are you okay if I respond to her and then it let her make the decision on what our next steps are. If if she’s coming back or wants to resign. Yes. Okay. Okay. Next up we have review review and consider approval of the open enrollment application. Seeking a deadline waiver. Yes.

00:36:52,600	You will see two different ones. There’s one that’s a family of three kids, uh, one at the high school, one at the middle school and one at Port Lincoln. And then there is another one with a Lakewood request. These are both.

00:37:06,500	These examples are families that started with us and moved and want to stay in Mandan. So I would recommend that you approve them. Okay. What are the wishes? I’ll make a motion to approve of the open enrollment application seeking a deadline waiver. Second, I’ll second it. We have a motion and a second to approve the open Romans. Any discussion? Mr. Minnich, please call. Roll. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes.

00:37:43,330	Yes yes. All right. Last we got future meeting dates. We got a few of them here. So we got August 3rd regular school board meeting. Today’s, uh, August 17th regular school board meeting, 5:30 p.m., city Hall. August 17th, school board retreat. That’s going to be also here at City Hall at 6:00.

00:38:01,500	August 27th. Insurance Committee 4:00 at the Brave Center. August 31st. Facilities and Finance Committee, 5:00 at the Brave Center. September 8th. Regular School Board Meeting 530 at City Hall. September 21st. Regular School Board, 530 City Hall.

00:38:20,700	And then that is also our budget hearing that night at 6:00 at City Hall. Any other meetings we’re missing? All right. The meeting is adjourned. Thanks, everybody.